Thankful for So Much

Day 53, Grand Asia 2017

Thursday, Nov. 23, 2017 – At Sea

Happy Thanksgiving! Or perhaps I should say Happy American Thanksgiving. This is the second time we have celebrated on this cruise, as we joined our Canadian friends to celebrate theirs last month.

My family had a tradition for a number of years of celebrating Thanksgiving by going on a cruise. It got us out of cooking the turkey, and anyone who wanted turkey could have it on the cruise ship. I never did – the “stuffing” is never the cornbread dressing I like, and so tonight I ordered the beef tenderloin with shrimp and crab.

 

In addition to remembering the many things for which I am thankful, today I especially remembered my mother. She passed away last year on Thanksgiving. I have thought of her many times on this cruise – sometimes catching myself thinking I will tell her about this or that, momentarily forgetting that I won’t be telling her after all.

I introduced Mom and Dad to cruising in the mid 1990s. They fell in love with it, and for the next several years we visited virtually every Caribbean island that had a cruise ship pier. My parents branched out to pass through the Panama Canal, take a cruise/land tour to Alaska and later sail the Baltic to Saint Petersburg and up the coast of Norway.

During the last two years of my father’s life, when he was slowed by a stroke and chemotherapy, we still managed to get away for a number of cruises – to the Caribbean, Alaska and Hawaii.

After he passed, my sisters and I joined our mother for a cruise in the eastern Mediterranean, and she and I cruised to Bermuda and back to the Caribbean.

Both of them would have loved this cruise and would be so glad that I decided to take it. They gave me my love of travel, and I will forever be thankful for that.